Good morning. We’re overlaying a fireplace in South Africa’s Parliament, a breach within the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea, and attainable modifications to girls’s rights in China.
South Africa’s parliament burns
A big fireplace broken a lot of the Homes of Parliament on Sunday. Officers warned that the injury to the historic advanced can be in depth.
Officers mentioned the fireplace unfold from an workplace area on the third flooring of a constructing adjoining to the previous Nationwide Meeting constructing. Cape City’s Fireplace and Rescue Service spokesman warned that the buildings themselves have been prone to collapse, given the extraordinary warmth of the fireplace.
Parliament’s spokesman mentioned {that a} man in his early 50s was arrested in connection to the fireplace, however he didn’t give any additional particulars.
Particulars: No accidents or fatalities have been reported. Parliament was not in session.
Quotable: “Your entire parliamentary advanced is severely broken — waterlogged and smoke broken,” mentioned JP Smith, Cape City’s mayoral committee member for security and safety, including that “the roof above the previous meeting corridor is totally gone.”
A breach within the DMZ
The South Korean army mentioned on Sunday that an unidentified individual had crossed the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea.
Footage of the individual climbing a tall barbed-wire fence — the southernmost of a number of fences within the 2.5-mile-wide buffer zone separating the Koreas — was captured by South Korean cameras at 6:40 p.m. on Saturday. Sensors on the fence set off an alarm, the army mentioned.
However this newest safety lapse at one of many world’s most closely armed borders went unnoticed till 9:20 p.m. There was no quick response from North Korea.
Particulars: Defections throughout the DMZ are uncommon and harmful, and crosses from South to North are even rarer. The DMZ is bristling with fences, sensors, minefields, sentry posts and armed patrols, and almost two million troops are prepared for battle on each side.
Background: The 2 Koreas have technically been at struggle for many years — the Korean Conflict halted in 1953 with a truce, not a peace treaty. Some 33,800 North Koreans have defected to the South since famine struck the North within the Nineteen Nineties.
Individually: Kim Jong-un has begun his second decade as North Korea’s chief with a vow to alleviate the nation’s continual meals shortages, an issue that he inherited from his father 10 years in the past.
China indicators change on girls’s rights
Beijing has framed proposed revisions to China’s regulation governing girls’s rights as a significant victory.
The revisions can be the primary main modifications to the regulation in almost 20 years and would refine the definition of sexual harassment, affirm prohibitions on office discrimination and ban types of emotional abuse.
On paper, it looks as if a triumph for activists. However many ladies are skeptical that actual progress will comply with.
The federal government has sought to regulate China’s fledgling #MeToo motion. It’s uncommon for victims of sexual harassment to go to court docket. Some girls have been fired or fined for lodging accusations. Peng Shuai, a star tennis participant, was censored inside minutes after she mentioned on social media {that a} high Chinese language chief had pressured her into intercourse.
Context: Girls have been more and more pushed out of the office and into conventional roles since China’s chief, Xi Jinping, assumed energy. Most of the proposed revisions exist already in different legal guidelines or laws however have been poorly enforced.
Particulars: The regulation would additionally codify girls’s proper to ask for compensation for house responsibilities throughout divorce proceedings — after the first-of-its-kind choice by a court docket final yr to award a lady greater than $7,700 for her labor throughout her marriage.
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To the moon — and past
This yr can be a giant one for spaceflight and exploration. Right here are some things to look at for in cosmic information throughout this journey across the solar.
The moon: If 2021 was the yr of area tourism and robotic missions to Mars, anticipate the moon to take heart stage. A number of governments are launching moon-bound spacecraft, with a watch towards returning people there later this decade.
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